Hands-on With the Fusion Garage Joojoo Tablet

Outside of Fusion Garage and TechCrunch, I’m probably the only other person to have an attachment to the Joojoo tablet. Towards the end of my time with TechCrunch, I tinkered with Prototype B during a random pit stop at the TC office in Palo Alto. The hardware design and the sort-of-working-but-not OS, which Fusion Garage claims to have full rights to, intrigued the nerd in me. I won’t be getting into the “who has the rights to what” portion of this story because it sounds like Fusion Garage has all their ducks in a row. I’ve been looking forward to this like everyone else in the TechCrunch camp, but it is what it is.

So let’s talk about the hardware. It’s heavy. Compared to what? Nothing really but I suppose you could compare it to a laptop. The weight is a non-issue once you place it on your lap or rest it against a crossed leg. The 12.1-inch capacitive screen is fairly responsive, but neither the software nor hardware is final. I’ll reserve judgment until a production unit has been sent over for review, which I’m told will be later this month. The Wi-Fi at the hotel where the demo was taking place crapped out, so we weren’t able to capture the Joojoo streaming HD content off of YouTube, but I did see it earlier and it works.

Joojoo is built on Linux and currently just browses the Web, but the plan is to open up the API to developers and see what they can build for the platform in the future. Sound familiar? I’m impressed with what I saw from this pre-production Joojoo, but at $500 it’s kind of expensive for what it is. I’m more intrigued by what FG has in store down the road.